by Trish Morey
So she let herself in and snapped on lights and then a gas heater as she went. It was cold inside the small cottage, although the vibe was cosy and embracing. It was decorated for the period, with overstuffed chairs and ruffled curtains and character in every nook and cranny, and Holly loved it. When she’d been a kid, before they’d done it up, she’d used it as her cubby house and her bolt hole. Strange to remember that now, she thought as she shivered. ‘It’ll soon warm up,’ she flung over her shoulder as she bustled through the kitchen, dropping the basket on the small table. ‘Have a look around, I just have to turn on the hot water and then it’s all yours.’
She looked over her shoulder, satisfied when she saw him prowling around the sitting room, picking up a magazine from the table. Excellent. If she was really quick, she’d be out of there before he realised what she was doing. And the sooner she got the hot water service turned on, the sooner she’d be back in the car and on her way home and maybe then she might be able to relax for ten minutes.
Just as soon as she got this hot water system switched on …
She dropped down on all fours beside the bed and then even lower before shimmying beneath. The switch had been set right in the middle at the back of the bed, just above the skirting. ‘Just for laughs,’ the electrician had joked when they’d finally found out where he’d put it and called him on it.
Yeah, it was funny all right.
She squirmed closer to the wall, found the switch, flicked it on and, mission accomplished, started backing out.
The cottage was tiny. Done out in girlie fabrics and filled with sofas loaded with cushions that looked like flowers. So not his thing. He dropped the magazine he’d picked up, a tourist guide that was not his thing either, and headed into the kitchen. He saw the basket where she’d dropped it, and hung his coat on a chair nearby, but Holly was nowhere to be seen. Until he went through another doorway and found her.
Or at least found her bottom half poking out from under the bed, a bottom half that was suddenly wriggling backwards, a bottom lifting once clear of the bed.
An unexpectedly shapely bottom.
And if he’d thought her shapeless polo top had been hiding secrets beneath, her khaki work pants had clearly been hiding a hell of a lot more.
Fabric pulled tight across the cheeks of her bottom, surprisingly, deliciously tight.
And he found his own pants becoming surprisingly tight in response….
Getting hard over prickly Ms Purman?
The jet lag was getting to him. It had to be.
But her rear end was still there wriggling backwards, a peach wrapped in boring khaki but a peach nonetheless, and the heat was still right there, keeping him hard. Keeping his gaze fixed on her.
He put his hand to his head. He wanted to be in bed. In bed and asleep as opposed to being awake and fantasising about the world’s least likely conquest.
‘Lost something?’ he asked, and the woman hauled herself out in a flurry of movement and the back of her head smacked into the iron frame with a loud thunk.
‘Ow!’
And he was sorry he’d said anything. Not because she’d hit her head, but because she’d immediately rocked forward on her knees, her hands cradling the back of her head, poking her bottom even higher, the fabric stretched even tighter, and he had the insane desire to peel those khaki work pants off to see if her behind was anywhere near as perfect as it looked.
If it was any other woman, in any other circumstance, he might even give in to temptation.
But this prickly hostile woman?
He must be mad to even think it.
‘I didn’t lose anything,’ she snarled as finally she rocked upright, using the bed to support her as gingerly she got to her feet, one hand still nursing the crash site as she turned around. ‘I was turning on the hot water system.’
‘Down there?’
‘The electrician thought it would be a funny place to put it.’ She winced as her fingers found a tender spot. ‘Oh, God, can this day get any worse?’
And he couldn’t help but smile as she put voice to her frustration, frustration he’d not only shared, but caused. But then he could afford to smile now, because he’d got what he wanted.
Unlike her.
‘Here,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her around, not really feeling guilty even though he had taken her by surprise. ‘Let me see.’
She tensed even before he touched her, but he had her turned around before she could tell him not to. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he asked, his hands still resting warm and heavy on her shoulders while he waited. While her heart thudded so loud in her chest he must surely hear it.
She pointed, eager to distract him before he felt that crazy drumbeat—’Somewhere there’—and held her breath as she felt the slide of his fingers under her ponytail, searching, probing her skull.
‘This has to go,’ he said, sliding down her hair tie, the tug of it pulling at her hair and making her scalp tingle.
And her hair fell in a thick curtain around her face as his fingers returned, sliding under the weight of it until her breathing grew shallow.
‘Ow,’ she said, flinching a little as a fingertip grazed the site, ‘just there.’
‘Let me see,’ he said, parting the hair around the spot, tilting her head in his hands so he could see in the dim light cast by the fringed light shade.
She didn’t dare breathe. It was enough to feel. It was enough to trace the path of nerves connecting with nerves until she tingled from her head down to her toes and all the places in between. And she wondered about the touch of a man who could make her feel so much with just his fingers to her scalp—and how it would feel if he slid those fingers anywhere near the places where she really tingled—over the nub of her rock-hard nipples, or near the pulsing heat between her thighs.
‘It’s only a graze but you’re going to have a bump,’ he said, and she stirred, his breath puffing at her hair, and that sent a new wave of sensation rolling through her, pooling down low and hot in the pit of her belly. ‘You might want to ice that when you get back.’
And suddenly his hands were gone and she swayed backwards before she remembered.
Oh, yes. ‘Back,’ as in home, where she’d been in such a rush to get to a scant minute or two ago, before this man had laced his fingers through her hair and set her scalp alight and made her forget who he was.
A Chatsfield.
A man no doubt used to snapping his fingers and having women line up to share his bed.
And she’d felt his fingers in her hair and imagined …
She had to get out of there! She spun around but he was still there. Instead of being right behind her though, now he was right in front of her and she was trapped between two walls and a bed and a man that stood between her and freedom and so she did the only thing she could do.
She snapped.
‘So now you’re a doctor?’
Those cool grey eyes merely blinked down at her before he shook his head and sat down on the bed. Which would have been fine except his damned legs were so long she was still trapped. ‘What?’ he said, reefing off first one and then the other of his expensive shoes.
‘As well as being an heir to a hotel fortune and Italian vineyard owner, I mean.’
His socks followed. ‘Your point being?’
‘It’s just you seem to like dribbling out the details, making us think one thing while all the while something else is true.’
‘I didn’t make you think one thing—you decided I knew nothing about wine all by yourself.’ He put his hands to the band of his knitted top and, before she realised what he was doing, reefed it over his head, tossing it into a corner.
Panic squeezed her lungs. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting undressed. You can stay and argue if you want, but I’m going to bed.’ He stood, bare-chested, his skin gleaming olive in the thin light, and put his hand to his trousers and suddenly she didn’t care how much space
he took up, she was going to get around him and through that door.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said, practically hugging the wall to get past. But she turned at the door, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on a wall so there was no chance she would witness if he did drop his trousers before she got the last word in. ‘Oh, and I was wrong before and you were right.’
He sighed. ‘I don’t get you.’
‘I don’t like you,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘and it is personal.’
Yesterday’s storms had long gone, the morning mist hanging like veils between the gums, swirling damp kisses to her cheeks as she worked, snippers in her hand cutting the new shoots off at the second bud. Some days she’d find the odd kangaroo or two grazing near where she worked, or there would be a brand-new lamb arrived overnight to welcome her.
She loved this season in the vineyard, a time she could be at one with the vines, talking to them, whispering words of encouragement as she went.
And she loved this time of the day.
Usually.
Not today.
Today there were no kangaroos and no brand-new lambs to make her smile. Today there were mutters instead of whispers. Today there were kookaburras laughing in the gum trees. Today her gut was wound tighter than a vine on a wire.
Because today Franco was joining her with the pruning.
The snippers in her hand felt awkward and uncooperative and not for the first time she glanced down at her watch. Not for the first time she asked herself why she bothered checking. It was still early and they would be hours yet. Apparently Josh had taken Franco into town to the menswear supplier and no doubt a decent breakfast while they were waiting for the shops to open.
Thank God for Josh. She didn’t want to be the one today to knock on Franco’s door and rouse him if he was still sleeping. She didn’t want to risk a second look at that bare chest or see his long wavy hair tousled by sleep or his square chin adorned in designer stubble.
She didn’t even want to think about that bare chest and all that olive skin or the tone of the muscles packed beneath. Neither did she want to remember the feel of his hands in her hair and on her scalp and what his touch had done to the rest of her.
No, the only thing she wanted was to see the back of him. And fully clothed into the deal.
She snipped her way along the row, some measure of anticipation fizzing in her blood. Today was the test. Franco had told them he could prune. He’d agreed that if he was rubbish, the deal was off. Today they’d get to find out if he’d spoken the truth or whether he’d overplayed his hand.
And whether she could breathe again without the risk of breathing air flavoured by him.
The tightness in her gut pulled another notch tighter. But given how confident he’d been of his talents, how much chance was there of that happening any time soon?
She heard them before she saw them. Two men talking somewhere out there in the mist in low tones, one voice unmistakably Australian, the other a blend, a product of two foreign cultures.
And their voices were like two different varieties of wine, she mused, two different characters with different top and bottom notes and regional flavours.
They were laughing at a shared joke, loud and uncontained, and for one horrible moment Holly had the feeling they were laughing about her.
She’d given Franco enough ammunition for a few good jokes. Had he shared the story of her fleeing from his bedroom as he’d got undressed?
And she was just telling herself not to be so paranoid when she saw them emerge from the swirling mist and they saw her and they both stopped laughing and she felt even sicker.
Josh waved. Franco kept his hands in his pockets.
At least she assumed it must be Franco, except he looked more like something out of an RM Williams bush outfitters ad, all decked out in slim-fitting moleskin jeans and boots and a dark jacket and with an Akubra on his head and all brand-spanking-new.
He could have looked ridiculous.
Knowing who he was, he should have looked ridiculous. He was no more stockman or station worker than Father Christmas.
Instead he looked amazing as he walked towards her, like a male model walking out of a magazine, his expression unreadable, all long-limbed and relaxed in his own skin.
But then she’d seen that skin and he had every reason to be relaxed.
She swallowed, and warned herself not to go there.
‘Holly!’ Josh called as the pair drew closer. ‘Look what I found. Reckon he could almost pass for a local. Whaddayareckon?’
Holly reckoned Franco looked even better close up. Close up she could see just how well those moleskin jeans fitted legs more used to wearing fine Italian fabrics. There was a check shirt under that jacket and a leather belt and buckle and, damn the man to hell and back, but the look suited him and suited him well. And close up she could see the shadowed face under the brim of his hat and could see it was even more Chatsfield-esquely beautiful than she remembered. Not that she was about to admit any of that. She smiled. At least she hoped it was a smile rather than a leer. ‘He sure could pass for a local, Josh, at least until he opens his mouth.’
Franco didn’t.
He was too busy remembering how Holly had looked last night with her hair down. He’d pulled off her elastic to check out her head wound not thinking it would make any great difference, but then she’d turned and looked up at him with those big blue eyes, and honey-blonde hair had framed her face and kissed her shoulders, and for a moment he’d been speechless.
Jet lag couldn’t be responsible for everything, he’d figured, but with her big blue eyes and her hair around her face, the woman had looked halfway edible.
Whereas today it was scraped right back again, almost as if she was punishing it. Good.
Which reminded him …
‘Good morning, Holly,’ he said in an impeccable tone. ‘I have something of yours.’ She blinked up at him, confusion muddying her blue eyes. ‘You left it in the cottage last night.’
He placed something feather-light in the palm of her hand. She looked down to see a black circle of elastic and her stomach clenched. Her hair tie.
She reddened as her fingers curled around it and she realised Josh was looking on. It would hardly help to say she hadn’t left it so much as he hadn’t given it back to her. It would hardly help at all.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said through gritted teeth as she shoved the offending article into a pocket in her jacket.
‘My pleasure,’ he said with a shrug. ‘So where do I start?’
She sent him off towards a bucket containing gloves and snips at the end of the row.
Josh watched him, scratching his head. ‘So … you got a thing for Franco?’
Holly watched him too, liking altogether too much the way the man looked from behind as he strode across the earth. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a thing for Franco, all right. Right now, I’d like to kill him.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHY DID YOU do that?’ she demanded the minute Josh had disappeared. ‘You know what Josh is thinking now.’
‘What’s Josh thinking now?’
‘That I spent time in your cottage last night.’
‘You did.’
‘But not because of that!’
He rubbed his brow. ‘Is that supposed to be a euphemism for you willingly spending the night in my bed?’
‘You know damn well it is!’
‘So you want me to tell Josh we didn’t sleep together?’
‘No! I don’t want you telling Josh anything!’
‘So you want him to think we’re sleeping together?’
‘No! Just forget I said anything!’ She took a deep breath, pulled on a pair of gloves and said, ‘Right, now, this is the way we do it here.’
He listened to her with a wry smile on his face. He didn’t care one way or another whether she was sleeping with the hired help. He just wanted to know if she was. You never knew when something like that might come in handy.
He’d told her he knew how to prune, but Holly still gave him a lesson in it anyway. She didn’t know how they did it in Italy, but she sure as hell wasn’t trusting her vines to anyone without explaining the way she expected it done. Even if he considered himself some kind of expert.
And then they’d started either side of the row together, snipping at the shoots, cutting off everything after the second bud, so she could keep a watchful eye on him. If he was going to be lousy at the job, he’d soon know about it and he’d be on the next plane back.
He was pruning the vines at the right place, she acceded, but he was painstakingly slow. She slowed her own pace down so much it was painful when she could have been quarter way along the row by now.
She whispered an apology to the vines as he dropped the snips. ‘Something wrong?’ she asked him.
‘They slipped,’ he said, and she smiled.
Game on.
Already her mind was ticking over—how long should she give him? How much time before the inevitable happened and he had to admit defeat? Because if the pruning was going to take this long, she might as well do it herself.
He dropped the snips again and cursed.
‘Having trouble?’
‘I’m out of practice, that’s all.’
‘Let me know if you want to give up. I won’t hold it against you.’
‘Not a chance,’ he growled, and started snipping in earnest.
And before long she didn’t have to hold herself back. She was easing off the brake, keeping up with his newly acquired pace, matching it and then matching it as he ratcheted up the pace again. She kept a close eye on what he was doing, looking for shortcuts he was taking, searching for faults, but his work looked faultless, as sure and as certain as her own.
Damn.
By morning teatime they’d completed the first two rows together. They dropped the snips into a bucket and spread out on a mat Josh had delivered with a basket Gus had prepared for them. The mist had cleared from the trees and now the air was cool and sharp, under a thin blue sky almost cloud free, and Holly was considering how she was going to spend the next six weeks with this man by her side, knowing he could do the job he’d promised to do, knowing what that meant for the future of Purman Wines.